How To Empower For Success? It Is Not Always The Leader…

How Does Personal Development Accelerate Empowerment in Any Company ?

There is so much about “Empowerment” in social and mainstream media lately. It sounds such a cool word. “To be empowered” is to be privileged, entitled, special, entrusted.

Funnily enough, when I googled empowerment speech, I had a long list of “women empowerment” footage coming up from Oprah Winfrey, Priyanka Chopra and Michelle Obama. It is exhilarating to listen to these speeches, but something was missing for me.

I posted an article on leadership types a few weeks back, and I am all for motivational and inspirational leadership. Nothing wrong with getting the juices flowing in an arena with audiences of thousands ready to soak up every single letter to the final dot .

But something was missing.

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I got thinking about empowerment.

There is a proverb “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish (and presumably buy him a fishing rod) and he will eat for a lifetime”.

Oxbridge Academy asked some of their student what empowerment meant to them.

Here are some of the answers:

“TO ME EMPOWERMENT MEANS AN OPPORTUNITY OF MAKE MY DREAM COME TRUE”

“IT INVOLVES TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR MYSELF AND MY LIFE AS WELL AS CREATING MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL CLIMATE IN WHICH I CAN GROW AND MOVE FORWARD.”

“GAINING WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE”

“SUCCESS, PRODUCTIVE, EMPLOYABLE, PROMOTION, CRITICAL THINKER, PROSPER, EDUCATED, EXPERIENCE.”

“IT MEANS GIVING EMPLOYEES SKILLS, RESOURCES, AND OPPORTUNITIES AS WELL AS MAKING THEM RESPONSIBLE AND ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT THEY’RE DOING.”

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E-N & P-O-W-E-R

Empowerment : 1650s, also impower, from assimilated form of en- (1) + power (n.). Used by Milton, Beaumont, Pope, Jefferson, Macaulay, but the modern popularity dates from 1986. Related: Empowered; empowering.

Empowerment is about buying the hungry man a fishing rod and teaching him how to use it. It is more beneficial in the long run to teach someone how to do something, than to do it for them.

This means education. This means sharing information. This means creating clear goals and objectives. This means creating an environment that celebrates the journey to success.

So far it sounds really good. Let’s teach people. Let’s give them the opportunity to increase their knowledge base and allow them to understand the relative importance of the issues they work on.

No one leads an organisation to success on their own. It is the collective excellence of many that builds success. All of us lead based on the considerable work of everyone on the team who has laboured, contributed, and committed to the same common goals. 

In an essay by CoThink Academy, it was publicised that the concept of Empowerment first emerged as a major management concept in 1977 with the publication of the book “Men and Women of the Corporation” by Rossbeth Moss Kanter. It gained further traction with her follow up books “Change Masters” published in 1983, and “When Giants Learn to Dance”, published in 1989. Moss Kanter argued that to be able to “dance” to the music of the flexible, fast-changing future they were now confronted with, large companies needed to liberate their employees from their existing, stultifying hierarchies.

In short, Empowerment is a means to include the team in decision making, to give them a participatory role which capitalizes on their own expertise and judgment, and which increases both their sense of individual worth and their commitment to the organization. 

Empowering people builds confidence in their capacity to execute a collective mission and achieve shared goals, establishes essential trust in an organisation, and creates the secondary level of leadership necessary when the leader is not present for key decisions so that the organization continues to function.

The benefits of employee empowerment are endless:

• Increased pro-duc-tiv-i-ty
• More discretionary effort
• Reduced voluntary turnover
• More commitment to the organisation
• Improved com-mu-ni-ca-tion

But ….

Lets go back to that proverb “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish (and presumably buy him a fishing rod) and he will eat for a lifetime”.

Here are my questions:

• Does the man really want to learn how to fish?
• Does he want to fish at all?
• Does he think he is worthy of learning how to fish?
• Does he think he is worthy of doing his own fishing

The answers to these questions do not come from the leaders, or from textbooks, or from media sources. The answers come from real people with real problems and struggles.

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Education and empowerment: Does it really work?

I came across a very interesting article that argues that formal education, whether academic or vocational, is often presented as a guaranteed way to change lives– but it's not that simple.

If you think about it , while education is undoubtedly a key element contributing to empowerment, the education and the empowerment do not necessarily go hand in hand.

While it is often important that employees receive training (skills) as part of their education, a more holistic approach that places a strong emphasis on enabling employees to develop a wider awareness of themselves and the external context in which they live is also vital.

Having the opportunity to develop an awareness of their own situation, as well as to share the vision for the company’s future, means not only that employees are in a better position to deal with multiple challenges but also have a sense of trust, confidence and security in themselves.

I see two elements in delivering successful empowerment in a company:

1. Willingness of Leaders - To give
2. Enthusiasm of Employees -To receive

Even with all the faith, willpower and goodwill in the world, even if a leader is transparent, provides skillset training, is willing to delegate the work, gives frequent feedback, is honest in his or her exchange of ideas, and offers benefits and rewards to employees, he or she cannot empower anyone until the opposite side is ready to receive that empowerment.

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Four Steps of Personal Development For Leaders

1. Define Personal Development Planning
2. Agree on Devel-op-ment Needs
3. Take Per-son-al Own-er-ship of Objectives
4. Review Per-son-al Devel-op-ment Objec-tives

Define Personal Development Planning (PDP)

Reed.co.uk says that a Personal Development Plan is a written account of self-reflection and improvement, which doubles up as a detailed action plan used to fulfil academic, personal, or career-based goals.

All PDPs are specific to each individual, the plan will generally detail an ideal future based on short and/or long-term ambitions.

This is a phase when a person has to make decisions for himself about what he or she wants to achieve in his or her life and why? This phase has to be realistic and acceptable to him or her and in line with his or her personal beliefs and values.

Agree on Devel-op-ment Needs

The first step for a leader is to meet with the employ-ee to get his or her per-spec-tive. This assessment is vital in establishing the first fundamental steps in the personal development journey

Where do they feel con-fi-dent?

Where do they think they are lack-ing?

What strengths do they wish they had, but feel they have no time to explore or advance?

What are their learning styles and learning preferences?

What skills do they express an inter-est in?

What areas do they strug-gle with? 

Take Per-son-al Own-er-ship of Objectives

Leaders need to understand the fact that when it comes to driving pro-duc-tiv-i-ty and performance for their companies, it is the job of the employee to construct and arrive at their personal development objectives. There is nothing more empowering than creating and achieving something we have set out to do.

Help and guidance is necessary, but it is down to the actual person to be in the driving seat. Everything else coming from an outside source may be perceived as pressure, control, or restraint.

Personal development objectives vary from person to person. They can be developing an existing asset, changing limiting beliefs, overcoming decades-long unease about certain values or assumptions, or developing new skills in self-management or in social situations.

Review Per-son-al Devel-op-ment Objec-tives

These “check-ins” are an opportunity to discuss progress made, give feedback, provide coaching, identify obstacles to success and agree on new objectives when current ones have been completed.

This should be a regular, bi-weekly if not weekly activity where leaders or management take time out for their employees.

These dis-cus-sions should be pro-duc-tive, con-struc-tive, infor-ma-tive and pos-i-tive. During the different phases of Self Development, a person can feel overwhelmed, confronted, defeated or frustrated. Despite their best efforts, the aver-age human has a frag-ile ego and high expec-ta-tions. When things are not changing as rapidly as someone expects, he or she can very quickly become demotivated with a damaged self-identity.

It is vital to recognise the efforts of the person during the progress even if there seems to be little or no progress. Remember, negative feedback equals fight-or-flight, and positive feedback releases dopamine that equals happiness and improved performance.

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I leave you with some of my favourite quotes on Empowerment

“Empowering the individual means empowering the nation. And empowerment is best served through rapid economic growth with rapid social change.”- Atal Bihari Vajpayee

“Be of service. Whether you make yourself available to a friend or co-worker, or you make time every month to do volunteer work, there is nothing that harvests more of a feeling of empowerment than being of service to someone in need.”- Gillian Anderson

“Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.” -Gloria Steinem

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To connect with me personally, please email [email protected].

About The Author

Mariett Ramm

Public Relations CommunicatePReneur. Bestselling Co-author. Publisher. Editor. Investigative Writer. A woman behind her desk most of the time. If not, she travels for interviews, summits, and conferences. She is a leading Transformation and Success Coach. Humanitarian. Empath. Battersea London Dogs and Cats Supporter and proud owner of two Havaneses, Princess Ponc and Sir Bruce.